BBVA will be main tenant in new Post Oak tower

BBVA to consolidate at new office tower

Published 5:30 am, Thursday, April 14, 2011

BBVA Compass will lease six floors of the 20-story building. It expects to start occupying the tower at 2200 Post Oak Blvd. in two years.

BBVA Compass will lease six floors of the 20-story building. It expects to start occupying the tower at 2200 Post Oak Blvd. in two years.

Photo: BBVA Compass

BBVA will be main tenant in new Post Oak tower

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BBVA Compass will be the main tenant of a new 380,000-square-foot office building at 2200 Post Oak Blvd. The bank will lease six floors of the 20-story building, which will be the headquarters of its holding company, Compass Bancshares.

The new location will centralize operations now in Greenway Plaza, River Oaks and Riverway near the Galleria. BBVA Compass will continue to operate branches in those locations, but employees working in a business park west of downtown all will relocate to the new building.

The bank employs 1,400 people citywide. Its local executives and headquarters staff of 800 will occupy 150,000 square feet of the new building. The company expects to hire another 150 workers in coming years, and they will work at the Post Oak location.

"We wanted a flagship building. We did assign some value to having our name on the building," said Manolo Sánchez, president and CEO of BBVA Compass and country manager of BBVA US.

Houston-based Redstone Real Estate is the developer and will lease space to BBVA Compass, which provided input on the design of the building. Manhattan Construction will manage the building project.

BBVA Compass expects to begin occupying the building by March 2013. The official groundbreaking will be scheduled for sometime next month.

Builders will use a green building certification system for energy and water efficiency, reduced emissions and improved indoor environmental quality.

BBVA Compass is also scouting for locations to combine operations in Birmingham, Ala., where the bank is headquartered, and in Dallas. The company's support staff of human resources, technology and back office workers is in Birmingham.

Many of its sales and retail and commercial banking employees work in Houston.

BBVA Compass operates more than 716 branches in the United States.

Its new Post Oak building illustrates growing demand for Class A buildings in the Galleria area after a long construction slowdown, said Lisa Bridges, director of market research for Colliers International, a real estate service firm.

"It has been years since anybody has built a new building here," she said.

Now, in addition to the BBVA project, work in the area includes a 19-story office tower Skanska USA is building at 3009 Post Oak Blvd. That building is slated to open in 2012.

Occupancy rates are high in the Galleria area, and there should be more demand by tenants once the BBVA Compass building is complete, Bridges said.